Window to the world

Chicago's film festival see possibilities with its international view

October 03, 2003|By Michael Wilmington, Tribune movie critic. "Getting the best out of the fest" sidebar by Regina Robinson.

Why should we care about movies from other countries--especially the nearly 100 new feature films from 40 different nations that comprise the 39th Chicago International Film Festival?

The answer is simple.

Because, more than ever, we need to know about people in other lands.

In a time like ours--one of widespread international tensions, conflicts and terrorism--it's vital that we know how the rest of the world thinks and what they feel, about their own countries and about ours. We need to try to find that common link that makes for great cinema, but that also helps ensure the world doesn't dissolve or explode in acrimony or hate. And an international film festival like Chicago's, one of the oldest in America, can offer one of the best crash courses on cultures around the world.

It can also give one of the most entertaining, exciting and joyous of learning experiences--if you know how to navigate your way around. That's what we'll try to do for you, starting this weekend and in the days to come, until the festival closes on Oct. 16.

Go to some of the best festival films this year, and you'll discover what it's like to live for a season in Istanbul (in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's double Cannes prize-winner "Distant") and what it feels like, deep inside, to be a lonely young emigre from the provinces trying to make it in that faraway city and land. Go to the fest's other Cannes double-winner, Denys Arcand's "The Barbarian Invasions," and you'll become part of a lively, sexy, highly verbal group of longtime French Canadian academic friends--the sparkling ensemble of Arcand's 1986 hit "The Decline of the American Empire" returned in older age, as they face family conflict and death.

You can also enter entirely imaginary or long-vanished period worlds. You can become, for example, an L.A. private eye (in Keith Gordon and writer Dennis Potter's "The Singing Detective"), a medieval Japanese samurai warrior (in Yoji Yamada's "The Twilight Samurai"), a weird aesthetic adventurer trapped in an endless puzzle (in Britisher Peter Greenaway's "The Tulse Luper Suitcases. Part One, The Moab Story") or even a gangly cartoonized French marathon bike-racer and grandmother (in Sylvain Chomet's utterly delightful French-Canadian-Belgian animated co-production, "The Triplettes de Belleville").

It may seem a daunting task. Today's modern film festivals can overwhelm you with their huge schedules--and almost all the films of Chicago 2003 are interesting in some way. But a few are transcendent looks at a special place and time. Some of the plums of the 2003 world festival circuit are here this year--films such as Cannes, Sundance or Toronto Fest prizewinners or critical hits "The Triplettes of Belleville," "The Barbarian Invasions," "Distant," "At Five in the Afternoon," and "The Station Agent"--along with revivals of classics from the past like Yasujiro Ozu's 1932 "I Was Born, But," (from Japan), Manoel De Oliveira's "Benilde, or The Virgin Mother" (from Portugal) and Elia Kazan's 1960 "Wild River" (from America).

The 2003 festival continues a tradition that is vital for a culturally rich city like Chicago and a melting-pot nation like America. This world film festival lets us see, understand and experience the world around us--as almost no other city festival or event can.

Do you want to know what the French, Germans, Israelis or Moroccans are thinking these days? Watch the great new-wave veteran Claude Chabrol's "The Flower of Evil," Christoph Hochhausler's intense border drama "This Very Moment," Michal Bat-Adam's laser-eyed romantic comedy "Life is Life" and Hakim Belabbes' kaleidoscopic family saga "Threads."

Are you worried about warclouds gathering over Iran? Then you might want to watch both the fest's prime examples of current Iranian cinema, "At Five in the Afternoon" and Jafar Panahi's "Crimson Gold."Movies are the art form that brings the world together. Every great world filmmaker I've ever met knows this well. Some of the best of modern Hollywood is here at the fest ("The Human Stain"). But so is the cinematic cream of dozens of other foreign film industries: resurgent ones like those in Iran, Iceland or India and the old, long-established ones from Britain, France, Italy, Russia and Germany.